Mayohiga Nights - Ran
by taiyakisoba
Summary: After an accident brings you to the magical land of Gensoukyou, you find yourself being nursed back to health by the Yakumo family, in particular the beautiful fox-youkai Ran. You soon realise you have feelings for her, but will you have the chance to act on them before you're sent back home to the Outside World?
1. Chapter 1

**Mayohiga Nights** by _taiyakisoba_

**Prologue**

The first thing you hear are the voices.

"I told you your showboating would cause something like this one day, Sukima."

"I don't understand it. I'm usually so precise."

"Well, you were drinking rather a lot, Lady Yukari."

A snort. "I only had one or two bottles at most, Ran."

"I think you're forgetting the whiskey."

"Oh yes, the whiskey."

"You did quite a job on him. He looks pretty beat up."

"But it's just physical damage, isn't it? He'll regenerate himself soon, right?"

"I'm afraid humans don't work that way, Chen. It'll take him some time before he's well again. How long would you say, Reimu?"

"Well, by the look of that leg, I'd say he'll be out of action for weeks."

"Weeks?" A sigh. "Well, I'll leave it all up to you, Reimu. As a human, I'm sure you're more than capable of-"

A derisive chuckle. "Oh no, Yukari. You're the one who caused this incident - you get yourself out of it." A pause. "Actually, come to think of it, it's probably better for you to send him to Eientei or the doctors at the human village."

"What are you implying? That I can't look after a single injured human?"

"I'm not implying it, I'm saying it straight: you're a menace. There's no way you can take care of him. You haven't got the patience. In fact, he's just as likely to come to more harm if he stays here."

"Are you saying that the Yakumo household is somehow dangerous?"

"No, just you."

"Well, we shall have to prove it to you, then."

"Lady Yukari, you don't mean?"

"Yes, Ran. We shall take this poor injured bird under our collective Yakumo wings and nurture him back to health."

"So we can keep him?"

"Yes, but only until he's better, Chen."

A happy clap of hands.

"Well, I'll be going then. I'll be back to check up on him in a day or two. Don't let anything happen to him, Sukima, or else I'll never forgive you."

"My, my. Aren't we protective of our fellow humans? You needn't worry, Reimu my darling. He'll be right as rain in no time at all."

Another snort followed by the sound of a door shutting.

"Lady Yukari?"

"Oh be quiet, Ran. I know, I know. But she baited me. You know there's no way I could've refused her challenge."

"So you really think we'll be able to nurse him back to health? He fell quite a distance."

"Of course. A human's anatomy is much the same as a youkai's, merely weaker. Now let me see..."

There is a scent of perfume. You feel someone leaning over you, and then intense pain as they try to lift your leg. You scream in agony.

"Uh, I don't think it's supposed to do that, Yukari-sama."

It's the last thing you hear before you pass out.

**Ran - Part 1**

The darkness recedes. You try opening your eyes, but your eyelids are like sheets of lead. Eventually you manage it and the first thing you see are two wide yellow-gold eyes looking straight into yours.

They blink in surprise and the face they belong to moves away. It's a woman's face, mature but beautiful, with short blonde hair poking from under a strange pointed hat covered in what look like paper amulets. It's the last thing you would have expected to see upon waking up, and she seems just as surprised as you are from her startled expression.

She blinks and composes herself, but the smile that comes to her face is one trying too hard to be friendly. Then she speaks, and you recognise the voice from those you heard earlier. It's a low voice, but feminine, and warm despite a hint of awkwardness.

"How do you feel?"

You tell her the truth: that you feel like you got hit by a train. Your mouth is dry and it's hard to talk and she reaches down out of your sight and you hear the sound of water being poured.

"Sit up a moment, if you can."

You struggle up onto your elbows, but even managing that is hard for you. The woman with the yellow-gold eyes sighs and puts down the glass. She leans across the bed and after slipping her hands awkwardly under your armpits she gently lifts you up into a sitting position. With her body in close proximity you notice her scent, a warm feminine musk utterly different from the smell of perfume that had accompanied that last burst of agonising pain.

You also notice that she has a number of fluffy blonde-gold tails like those of a fox arrayed behind her. At first you think it's some strange decorative addition to her blue and white robes, but the way they gently sway as she turns and reaches behind her makes you realise they're part of her.

After retrieving the glass of water for you she plumps up the pillow and slips it against the small of your back. She's careful to keep her touching of you to a bare minimum and you have the uncomfortable feeling that despite her politeness and attentiveness, she really doesn't want to be there.

"My name is Yakumo Ran," she says, handing you the water. "And this is Mayohiga, the home of my mistress the Lady Yukari, Youkai of Boundaries. You are safe here, so please relax. As soon as you are well we will send you home."

Youkai? It certainly doesn't sound safe to you. You ask her what happened to you.

"There was an accident. My mistress was engaged in a danmaku battle with the miko of the Hakurei Shrine when she brought the- what are those things called again? Oh yes - the train you were on through a gap. But she miscalculated due to... fatigue." Ran shakes her head in a gesture you suspect is a common one for her. "The train wasn't supposed to have anyone on it."

You explain that all you remember is that you were on your way home and fell asleep.

"Well," says Ran. "The carriage you were in bounced off a mountain. You're lucky to be alive. Once you feel better Lady Yukari will send you back across the Border. Please don't try to move and just rest. If you need anything, either I or Chen will provide you with it."

She is already walking out the door when you ask her where in Japan you are.

"You are no longer in Japan," she says, without turning around. "This is Gensoukyou, the Land of Illusions."

The door closes and you sit there, drinking the water and wondering when you're really going to wake up.

After a while you lie back down. Every part of your body feels tender. You pull the bedclothes off and find you've been stripped down to your underwear. You give yourself the quick once-over and find that although everything is where it should be there is considerable bruising. Your left leg also aches. Even though it's not in a splint, you seem to remember breaking it and it definitely feels as if it has been.

You're still examining yourself when the door opens a crack. You see a little brown-haired head appear, topped with what can only be described as cat's ears. It belongs to a young girl - if she is a girl, that is - a pretty one, with large orange eyes and delicate, childlike features.

When she sees you looking at her, her eyes go wide and her mouth opens in shock. A heartbeat later she slams the door shut and you hear the pattering of running feet.

Another hallucination.

You lie back down. At least you've hallucinated a comfortable enough bed. Best to go back to sleep, and when you wake up all the gap youkai and fox women and cat girls will be gone.

The next time you wake up you realise it's no dream. Ran is bringing a little tray of food into the room. You sit up.

Ran looks across at you as she puts the tray down on the bedside table. "So you can sit up by yourself, now. Good." There's a look of relief on her face, but you suspect it has more to do with her not having to touch you again than your recovery.

Ran turns away and busies herself setting the tray in order. "We have rice and pickles and miso soup and salted salmon. I hope you don't mind... we eat rather simply here in Mayohiga."

You tell her that everything smells great and that you're starving. Ran seems pleased, so you ask her if she was the one who cooked everything.

"I do all the cooking at Mayohiga," she explains. "Except when Lady Yukari feels like nabe. She always insists on doing the cooking then, although it's really just chopping things up." She stops all of a sudden, as if she has spoken too candidly.

There is movement from the open doorway, and you hear another voice that you remember from the first time you briefly regained consciousness. "Ran, are you boring our guest with the petty domestic arrangements of the Yakumo household?"

Standing in the doorway is a tall, exquisitely beautiful woman with long blonde hair and dressed in a gorgeous ankle-length dress not dissimilar to Ran's. There is a smile on her face and her striking violet eyes glitter with amusement as she considers you, all the while tapping the fan in her hand against her lips.

Ran bows her head in apology and moves aside for the mistress of Mayohiga. As she approaches the bed your eyes are drawn to hers, large and violet and shining. Yukari's beauty flows from her as an almost palpable force. You feel Ran looking at you and when you manage to pull your gaze from Yukari to glance in her direction you see she is wearing a cold and distant expression, so different from the one she had before.

"I take it you are comfortable?" Yukari asks. You nod, unable to find your voice. "I thought you would be more at home in our western-style room. Beds are so much more comfortable for the invalid than futons on hard tatami, don't you think?" She chuckles, opening the fan and covering her mouth in a well-rehearsed gesture.

Yukari's eyes flick towards the tray of food. "I must apologise for Ran's cooking, however. It is awfully simple. And as a kitsune, there must of course always be aburage in the miso soup. Isn't that so, Ran?"

Ran looks up and smiles, but it's strained.

You feel compelled to change the subject away from Yukari's criticism of Ran and so you apologise for putting them to so much trouble.

Yukari laughs. "Oh, it really is no trouble. We are the ones who should be apologising, after all. Besides, I'm sure that Ran is enjoying having someone else around the house to mother other than Chen. Isn't that right, Ran?"

This time when Ran looks up she isn't smiling and her cheeks have turned crimson. "Lady Yukari," she begins. "I-"

"Come, Ran, let us leave our guest to have his dinner in peace," Yukari says as she moves towards the door. "I am sure he doesn't need you hovering around to take the bones out of his salmon for him."

Ran flushes again and nods. She follows Yukari out, but as she closes the door behind her she looks back at you.

Her face is still pink, but there is resentment in her yellow-gold eyes.

The door closes and you go back to eating. Being awake and on your own again you feel suddenly lonely, but driven by hunger you devour everything on the tray. It's all delicious, and there are no bones in the salmon.

They've already been taken out.

You've been bursting to go to the bathroom for what seems an eternity. Gritting your teeth at the wave of pain you're expecting to feel in your leg, you're just about to swing yourself out of bed when Chen throws the door open.

"I'm soooo sorry!" she cries, hurrying up to help you extricate yourself from the bedclothes without having to put any weight on your bad leg. "I was out in the garden chasing a dandelion seed when I suddenly remembered Ran-sama asked me to look after you."

You tell her not to worry about it. She's very gentle and you're glad that she doesn't seem to have the same embarrassment that Ran does in touching you. Leaning on Chen you hobble to the bathroom and you're finally able to relieve yourself at long last. Chen helps you back into bed.

As she tucks you in you ask her where Ran has been and she blinks her huge orange eyes at you. "Oh, she's been busy with Yukari-sama." The way the little cat girl glances to the left and blushes makes you realise that she's lying.

You don't make a big deal about it. After all, you're being treated very well. Maybe Ran was getting sick of having to do it all by herself. Yukari certainly doesn't seem to have much interest in you.

Chen sits down on the chair beside the bed and after she apologises again for neglecting you the two of you start to talk. It seems the little cat girl is Ran's familiar, just as Ran is the familiar of Yukari. Chen is eager to answer any of your questions, and being young she's able to explain things in a way that's easy to understand. You soon learn a lot about Gensoukyou and its inhabitants. Even with all the talk of danmaku duels and spell cards and other magical things, the place seems not so terribly different from the real world, or the Outside World as Chen calls it, just more old-fashioned.

You soon turn the conversation around to Ran and Chen is more than happy to talk about her mistress. The glow that comes to her eyes and the flush of colour to her cheeks as she tells you about her makes you strangely jealous, but whether it's to feel love like that or to be its target, you're not sure. After a while you start to feel tired and Chen, with some disappointment, leaves you to rest. You spend the remainder of the day drifting in and out of sleep.

That night something wakes you up and you lie there, your eyes still closed, listening. The door creaks a little and the darkness behind your eyelids lightens a small degree. It's only when you hear the door creak again and the light dies away that you turn your head and get a glimpse of a white-tufted tail disappearing behind the closing door. You fall back asleep.

The next morning you wake up bathed in sweat, your head throbbing in pain. You struggle to sit up and cry out, but you barely have enough energy to move. You lie there in your agony for what feels like an eternity before the door opens.

It's Chen, coming to bring you breakfast. As she approaches the bed she takes one look at you and drops the tray with a crash.

She rushes from the room crying, "Ran-sama! Ran-sama!" and soon the kitsune is hurrying into the room. She places her hand on your forehead and the coolness of her skin is a moment of exquisite relief amid all the pain. The look on Ran's face is serious. She says something to Chen who nods and runs out, and then she strips the bedclothes off your body and lifts you out of bed. She's surprisingly strong.

The next thing you know you've been stripped naked and placed in a cold bath. The shock dazes you, but you quickly feel a little better. Soon, though, everything about you starts to take on a weird dimension. The walls of the bathroom appear to close in on you and the designs on the tiling take on a demonic aspect. There is someone there, splashing water on your face, and you look at them but you can't recognise who they are. Someone else comes in and ice is poured into the bath and you shiver. After a while you're being lifted out and being patted all over by a huge fluffy towel and for a moment you think you're a child again, being dried by your mother after a bath. But your mother never had golden eyes and she certainly never had those pointed ears and all those fluffy tails.

The rest of the day is a feverish dream. People come and go. You're made to drink things and swallow things and cool hands are placed on various parts of your body.

The next thing you know you're staring at the circular light fixture on the ceiling. The room is dark and the cord is hanging down just over your chest. You wonder what time it is and if you should turn the light on. You begin the difficult process of pulling your hand out from under of the bedclothes when a hand at the end of the sleeve of a blue robe gently places itself on your chest.

"Don't try to move," says a voice that you immediately recognise as Ran's. "You've had a high fever. It's best if you just rest here in the dark."

You try to turn your head but the hand appears there next, stopping you. The palm is soft and cool against your forehead and you remember its touch from that time of agony.

Ran leaves it there. It's a pleasant, relaxing feeling and you close your eyes and rest the back of your head on the pillow again as she smooths away a lock your hair from your eyes.

She soon takes her hand away with a murmur. "Good. Your temperature is back to normal."

You hear her robes rustle softly and you know she's making herself comfortable on the chair next to the bed. You ask her how long you've been out for.

"The whole day," she says. "It's midnight."

You apologise for making her waste so much of her time and she laughs. It's the first time you've heard her laugh, and you wish you could see what she looks like when she does it. But the sound is so warm and unexpectedly cheerful that you don't mind just listening to it.

"Please don't worry about that," she says. "I'm - we're just so relieved that you're okay." Her voice becomes suddenly more serious. "It's all my fault, really. I shouldn't have left everything to Chen. She's a good girl, but she doesn't really have that much experience in looking after people."

You ask her if she knows what caused your fever.

"Probably just a cold. Eirin - she's a doctor - said that your body isn't used to diseases in Gensoukyou yet. Apparently it's quite common for humans who have crossed over from the Outside World to get seriously sick, even those who haven't been injured in a train crash." She sighs and places her hand on your shoulder. "Reimu was right when she said that we wouldn't know what we're doing. Please forgive me."

You tell her not to worry about it.

Ran shakes her head. "Maybe it would be better to move you to Eientei so that Eirin can look after you."

You really don't like this idea. You tell Ran that you're already feeling much better and that you'd prefer to stay here. You feel awkward, since it's a pretty lame excuse, but Ran quickly agrees and says that you're welcome to stay at Mayohiga for as long as you need to.

"As long as you can put up with my cooking," she says with a self-mocking laugh.

You tell her you really like her cooking.

Maybe you said it too seriously, for Ran makes no reply. Her hand slips off your shoulder and she settles herself back in the chair.

You tell her she doesn't really need to stay since she must be feeling sleepy herself.

Ran murmurs a denial. "When Chen was small she often used to get nightmares. I'd sit with her until she fell back asleep. So I'm quite used to it." She sighs. "All this seems strangely nostalgic, somehow."

Ran continues to talk, but you don't really hear any of it. You've already drifted off to sleep, your body exhausted after the day's suffering,

Your sleep is far from dreamless, but you're no longer haunted by dark feverish thoughts and disturbing images and when you wake up you feel like a new man. You hear a noise from beside you and you turn your head to see Ran still in the chair beside your bed, fast asleep and snoring. You feel immediately guilty at having forced her to stay up watching over you. You lie there and watch her sleep, having decided that waking her up would be wrong. Besides, you're worried that you'll startle or embarrass her if you do.

Ran is still dressed in her usual blue robes and her unusual pointed hat and you feel another pang of guilt. She mustn't have left your side for a single moment. Her chin rests on her ample chest, her short blonde hair hanging down across her face, hiding it from you. All you can see the tip of her nose and the long black length of her eyelashes, and a sudden desire to see her yellow-gold eyes strikes you. They're so beautiful and such an unusual colour. But then, Chen's are orange and Lady Yukari's violet, so the colours are probably not so strange in Gensoukyou.

Ran mutters and moves her head so that her chin is now resting against her shoulder and you can see the profile of her face clearly. You notice the glistening of saliva at the corner of her mouth.

So Ran drools in her sleep.

Seeing such a homely yet intimate sight makes you strangely embarrassed. The fact that her bust is completely unobscured now also doesn't help. As she breathes her chest rises and falls, lifting her head a little each time, and you're suddenly aware of just how big her breasts are as they press up against the blue material of her robes. You turn away and stare up at the cord of the light hanging over your head, but soon you find your gaze drawn back to her.

Ran really is gorgeous, you decide. Her long lashes, the slightly rounded curve of her face, the fullness of her lips, even with a touch of drool at the corner of them. The memory of her yellow-gold eyes, how large and widely spaced they are, lending her face a comforting softness even with the light of anger in them.

You decide that looking at her any longer would be creepy, so you turn away. And just in time, too, as you hear Ran murmur and her robes rustle as she wakes up. You close your eyes and pretend you're still asleep.

Ran leans over you and the palm of her hand covers your forehead. For a moment you think she knows you're awake, that somehow your conscious mind is detectable through your skin. You consider opening your eyes and ending the charade, but something stops you.

Her palm rests there for far longer than it takes to feel for a temperature. Then you feel her fingertips brush across your temple and down your cheek and you open your eyes in surprise. Ran, startled, jerks her hand away.

"Sorry," she says quickly. "I didn't mean to wake you." Her yellow-gold eyes meet yours for a moment before she turns away, and you notice the embarrassment in them. "I think your fever is gone for good. I'll just go and fix you breakfast."

Ran leaves the room without looking back.

Later that morning, with Ran and Chen's help, you finally get the chance to see more than just the corridor outside your room and the bathroom it leads to. As they take you around the house, Ran says that she can't help but feel a bit ridiculous at the irony of taking a person who can barely walk on a guided tour. Then, almost shyly, she lets Chen do all the talking.

The little cat girl takes you first of all to a closed door ("Yukari-sama's room. She's asleep now. She does that a lot," to which Ran cries "Chen!") and then to her own room (which she quickly bustles you out of when she spots a pile of freshly-laundered underpants sitting at the foot of her futon). She's about to show you Ran's room (which is next to hers) when Ran plants her arm firmly across the doorway and glares at her. Chen decides to show you the living room instead ("This is our kotatsu. It's my favourite place in the house!"). Then, leaving you supported by Ran alone, she pulls opens the amadoa. The air that flows in is fresh and chill and with it the full pale light of the day spills into the room. You stumble a little in your eagerness to step out onto the porch, but Ran catches you - and just as well, for the sight that Chen has revealed is so incredibly beautiful you probably would have fallen to your knees if she hadn't been supporting you.

You're staring out across a traditional Japanese garden with a white chalk path meandering among azalea bushes and miniature maple and pine trees, framed by mountains and forest. But it's the light, the strange, exquisitely delicate light of the sun in this place that is most beautiful of all, a light which suffuses everything it touches with a dreamlike glow, the landscape glistening newborn as after a sun-shower in the Outside World, where every colour is rendered deeper and vivid like a just-finished oil-painting. In the distance, beyond the glistening jade and crimson of the forest, the mountains rise blue-grey like powdered cobalt, their snow-capped summits flaring under the sunlight with white-gold. And above it all, the sky, a shade of blue you remember from childhood, a depthless blue that seems to lead your eyes on forever.

Gazing at the landscape, trying to look at everything at once, you feel as if every place you've seen in your life up to this point has been a shadow, and this the original in all its glory.

"This is Gensoukoyou?" you ask, and both Ran and Chen nod.

For a long while you can only stare. Finally, Chen and Ran take you back inside. As you mutter about how beautiful it is, Ran and Chen look to each other and smile, pleased by the intensity of your reaction.

"It's easy to forget how beautiful Gensoukyou is when you see it every day," says Ran. "It's nice to see it through someone else's eyes for a change."

They sit you down at the kotatsu and then Chen closes the amadoa. With the landscape hidden again, you suddenly notice how cold it is. Ran explains that although it's still fall, winter appears to be coming early this year.

The kotatsu is delightfully warm. Ran has Chen bring some persimmons and as she sits there, cutting them up, she seems to forget her earlier shyness and starts to talk about Gensoukyou. She clearly enjoys telling you about all the different groups of youkai and the various interesting or strange characters that inhabit the Land of Illusions and you soon learn a lot about the history of the place, which seems to be an area that Ran has a special interest in. Her accounts of events hundreds of years ago are so vivid that you can't help but comment at how much Ran knows, and how she really makes it seem as though she was there at the time.

Ran stops talking all of a sudden and a deep crimson spreads across her face. She excuses herself to go and get some tea, leaving you and Chen alone.

You ask Chen if you said anything wrong. Chen shakes her head.

"I don't think so," she says. Then she sighs. "It's been a long time since I've heard Ran-sama talk about when she was younger. I think maybe she's just feeling a little nostalgic."

Nostalgic. You remember Ran using that word before.

You're suddenly compelled to ask Chen how old she is. The cat girl blushes and you regret being so forward and start to apologise, but she shakes her head.

"I'm a hundred and twenty years old," she says. She flicks her two tails from behind her and explains how a nekomata's tail splits every hundred years.

At first you think she's joking, but when she doesn't laugh and just blinks at you, you realise she's being serious. Of course, you've heard stories of youkai and how they can appear to be eternally youthful despite their advanced age, but there was something about Chen's innocence and naivety that made you estimate her age at the mid-teens.

You're about to change the subject when another realisation strikes you and you ask whether the same is true about the tails of a fox-youkai like Ran.

Chen nods.

You sit back, dumbfounded. So that means Ran must be little over nine hundred years old.

You're still thinking about it when Ran comes back in with the tea. She puts the tray on the table and sits down. You try not to look at her with different eyes, but it's hard. Nine hundred years? It's over ten human lifetimes. And she doesn't look much older than the early forties at most.

Ran notices you looking at her, but says nothing and pours the tea. She looks down at the teapot in her hands with intense concentration and you realise that she must have heard you and Chen talking from the kitchen. You're angry at yourself for being so indiscrete.

You finish your tea and Ran suggests to Chen that she take you outside for a walk around the home's grounds. Even in the slightly strained atmosphere, you can't help but be excited by the prospect.

Chen shows you everything, from her favourite scratching tree to the little brook where she practises catching fish by hand. "Ran-sama says it's important to keep our natural youkai skills sharp," she explains. "And not to just rely on spell cards all the time."

You're glad of the opportunity to talk about Chen's mistress again. You find yourself asking more questions about Ran, some of them a little personal, but Chen doesn't seem to mind answering.

"Ran-sama isn't really that sensitive about her age, but Yukari-sama definitely is. If you ask her how old she is she'll tell you she's seventeen. But I know she's over a thousand years old. Oh no! Please don't tell her I told you!"

"No, Ran-sama has never been married. I've never even seen her go out on a date. There's a guy in the human village that runs an antique shop and she sometimes goes there on business for Yukari-sama, but he isn't her boyfriend or anything. I think the black-and-white witch-girl likes him."

You press Chen about this 'guy in the human village'. As it turns out, he's a half youkai, and you express surprise that youkai and humans can have children.

"I don't think it happens very often," says Chen. "It'd be a bit sad, wouldn't it? For both the youkai and the human, I mean."

You agree that it would be.

When the two of you return to the house, Ran tells you that Reimu, the miko of Hakurei shrine, has decided to come and visit. Yukari, to your surprise, is already awake and bustling around the house, and she quickly falls to ordering Ran and Chen to dust this or prepare that. The house, usually spotless, is somehow at the end of it all it even neater. Yukari, too, has changed. The few times that you've spotted her since the evening she visited you in your room, she's been dressed in a nightdress, her hair dishevelled, stumbling to the bathroom or appearing at the door to her room to receive tea or sake from Ran. But today she's the elegant mistress of Mayohiga once more. Ran has spent hours on her hair and makeup and the dress she's wearing is as gorgeous as the one you saw her in that night, if quite a bit more revealing of her legs and cleavage.

Chen explains that Yukari and Reimu are old friends, although they fight all the time over everything. You recall the conversation they had over your semi-conscious body and you wonder just what Reimu will be like.

She ends up being totally different from anything you had expected.

What had you expected? As a human and a miko, you had expected someone who was perhaps soft-spoken and gentle and, well, more like a priestess. You expected her to be reserved, and Reimu is, but wrapped within that reserve is a surprising fierceness. Despite having spent several days with dangerous youkai in their home, you've never been all that nervous around them. But this Reimu, with her red-and-white robes and her flashing amber eyes, makes you nervous.

You're sitting at the kotatsu again, holding in your hand a yunomi of tea that Ran came and served you both, complete with apologies that Yukari is still getting ready and that she will be with you both shortly.

Reimu eyes you, unsmiling; everything you do, every movement of the yunomi, seems to attract her silent disapproval somehow.

She soon submits you to a barrage of questions about how the Yakumos have been taking care of you. It's more like an interrogation than a conversation, and it occurs to you that Reimu seems to want to find out as much as possible herself before Yukari appears.

You answer truthfully, that you've been treated very well and have no complaints, but this just seems to annoy Reimu for some reason. She takes another handful of senbei - the miko, you can't help but notice, has the appetite of someone who's starving - and eats them in a single mouthful. When she's finally able to speak again, her eyes do not meet yours but focus on the room's alcove with its wall-hanging and arrangement of cosmos.

"I know the Yakumos might seem harmless," she says, taking a sip of her tea. "But don't ever make the mistake of thinking that they're human. They're youkai. And humans and youkai can never be friends."

You mention that she and Yukari seem to be close. Reimu blushes, but the pinkness in her cheeks vanishes almost as soon as it appears.

"Our relationship as guardians of the border necessitates interaction," she says, and leaves it at that.

"Interaction? My, my!" It's Yukari's voice, and you turn to see a thin crack appear in the air. A pair of white-gloved hands grip slip out of it, gripping its edges, and it soon widens into a tear as the Youkai of the Boundaries pulls herself out. Behind her, in the blacker-than-black darkness of the gap left in space, a myriad of shimmering eyes squirm back and forth.

You recoil at the bizarre and horrible sight and look towards Reimu, but the miko gives no indication she's noticed anything and instead continues to sip at her tea.

Yukari extricates herself from the gap with surprising grace and slips her stockinged legs under the kotatsu at right angles to you both. The perfume she's wearing wafts over you, a youthful and cheeky fragrance. The gap, thankfully, quickly closes behind her and vanishes.

"Is that all I am to you, dear Reimu?" Yukari pouts, leaning across the kotatsu so that her cleavage is clearly visible. "A colleague with which to interact?"

Reimu turns her flashing eyes on the youkai and you suspect at that moment that all the hostility you felt directed to you was merely a reflection of the hostility she feels towards Yukari. And yet you can't help but feel she is being unfair to her. As you told Reimu, Yukari has only ever shown you kindness.

But perhaps Reimu is right about one thing. Maybe deep-down you had forgotten that the Yakumos are youkai. The monstrousness of the gap and its hideous eyes certainly did shock you. What had you expected?

As Reimu and Yukari argue and exchange the kinds of teasing barbs that only close friends are capable of, they all but ignore you and your mind begins to wanders to Ran.

Ran, like Yukari, is a youkai. Despite her tails and her ears, it's hard not to think of her as a human. Even the revelation of her age was a shock that quickly disappeared as soon as you saw her face again, that youthful-mature face with its beautiful yellow-gold eyes.

But the sight of that gap makes you wonder now what strange powers Ran has hidden within her. You know from Chen that the inhabitants of Gensoukyou often duel each other in the artistic display of magical combat known as danmaku, and she also explained how dangerous such fighting is. Like mock-fighting with real swords, any slip up could be fatal. It's this mixture of beauty and danger that makes it so popular, she said.

You wonder what Ran would look like in such a duel. It's hard to imagine.

You're so involved in trying to visualise it that you give a start when you hear someone come into the room. It's Ran, and she brings with her more snacks and water to refill the teapot. Her eyes lowered, she pours fresh tea into Reimu's and then Yukari's yunomi, but when she refills yours she flashes a smile at you that seems to make fun of the other two.

You're so surprised by the mischievousness of the smile that she's gone before you have a chance to smile back.

As Reimu and Yukari fight you continue to be ignored, but it's a relief more than anything else and it gives you a chance to think about the smile as you sip your tea. You reach out a hand for some of the fresh senbei but you discover Reimu has already eaten them all.

The movement attracts Yukari's attention. "Would you be a dear and bring some more from the kitchen? Ran knows where they are." And then it's straight away back to the half-flirting half-in earnest argument over what Reimu sees as Yukari's lack of responsibility.

Ran is surprised to see you come into the kitchen, but when you explain that Yukari sent you, she smiles a secretive smile.

"I'd wait a while before bringing in the senbei," she says. "I think Lady Yukari wants some time alone with Reimu." She inclines her head towards the little table in the corner which is often occupied by Chen and you sit down at it.

As Ran chops daikon for tonight's dinner with relentless efficiency, she tells you about how Reimu and Yukari met. It's a strange story about ghosts and demon-trees and the Netherworld. When Ran comes to the part of the story where she herself figures, you mention that you would have loved to have seen her danmaku duel with Reimu. It must have been a beautiful sight.

The chopping stops for a second, then Ran says, "It's been a while since I've duelled with anyone. I wonder if I'm still in good enough shape for it."

You open your mouth to make some dumb joke but manage to shut it before you make a fool out of yourself. Ran, though, is looking over her shoulder at you as if she was half-expecting you to say something. Then she sighs and returns to her chopping.

"You should probably take that senbei to them now," she says. "Otherwise Reimu might start chewing on the table."

You grab the refilled bowl and rejoin Reimu and Yukari. They must have reached some kind of stale-mate or ceasefire as they're both sitting in silence when you come in.

Reimu looks at you, but rather than her previous displeasure the expression on her face is one of concern.

"I think I'll ask Eirin to visit you tomorrow," she says. "When she thinks you're well to cross the Border we'll send you home."

Home. You're surprised at how much the word frightens you. There's so much more that you want to do here in Gensoukyou. To just be able to glimpse it before it's snatched back away from you is a terrifying thought.

Yukari must have noticed the look of disappointment on your face. She smiles and says, "Oh, is there really such a huge rush, Reimu? Our guest has been a most welcome addition to the Mayohiga household. Chen has had a chance to learn about responsibility and Ran, well, she is positively glowing with another child around to coddle."

At that moment you both hate and love Yukari, loving her for voicing her support in having you stay longer in Gensoukyou, hating her for her renewed teasing of Ran. And being described as a child (and also, you suspect, a pet) makes you not a little humiliated. However, Reimu saves the situation by making some remark about how the senbei are too salty and you take the opportunity to seat yourself back at the table.

Reimu, after taking some handfuls of senbei and secreting them in the folds of her robe, gets to her feet. "Well, I'm going now. I have to go check the donation box at the shrine. Don't forget, Sukima, what I said about responsibility." She leans on the final word as she flashes a glare at Yukari. For her part, the mistress of Mayohiga merely places her fan against her mouth and smiles saucily with her eyes.

Rather than being just old friends, they seem more like some kind of bizarre old married couple.

You both see Reimu out. Ran is there to open the door, and all four of you step onto the porch. After some words of farewell to Yukari, the miko glances at you, as if challenging you again with her earlier words.

The Yakumos are youkai, and youkai and humans can never be friends.

But standing beside you is Ran, and that delicate scent of hers that you've come to associate with care and happiness, the memory of her cool hand sweeping the hair from your forehead, the yellow-gold of those eyes, the first thing you saw in Gensoukyou, the sound of her laughter - all these things seem to make a lie of Reimu's words.

The miko frowns, as if she senses what you're thinking, and then she turns and flies up into the air, as if lifted upwards by some great invisible gust of wind. You stare up into the sky, open mouthed, as her now tiny red-and-white form disappears over the green sea of the forest.

"She can fly?" you whisper.

"We can all fly," says Ran. And there is such an unexpected tone of girlish teasing in her voice that you can't help but turn to look at her. But she's already walking back inside the house close on the heels of her mistress.

Something changes after Reimu's visit. Maybe it was your unspoken but shared resistance to the miko's attempt to force your return to the Outside World that did it, but that night, as you have dinner with the Yakumos, a lot of the awkwardness you previously felt is gone. Yukari insists on making nabe, partly because the weather has grown colder and partly as a form of protest against 'Hakurei getting involved in Mayohiga business' - a reference you don't really understand until Ran explains to you that nabe happens to be Reimu's favourite dish and that by not inviting her to dinner, Yukari is expressing her annoyance. You can't help but think it all a bit over-subtle, but it's definitely something you'd expect from the elegant and yet iron-willed youkai mistress of Mayohiga.

The nabe is rich, filled with the matsutake mushrooms that Chen took you hunting for in the afternoon while Yukari made a nuisance of herself in the kitchen, bossing Ran around and chopping everything in sight. But whatever happened in the kitchen to make Ran look so exasperated is forgotten as you all sit and enjoy the dish. Yukari is in high spirits and asks Ran to break out the sake. You're soon enjoying tiny cup after tiny cup of the burning, fragrant liquid, served by Ran who pours the bottle with professional demureness. Around Yukari you notice she's a very different person, passive and compliant, the quintessential hostess.

Yukari insists that you meet her drink for drink, and you do for a while. Eventually, the etiquette of drink pouring is forgotten and Yukari starts pouring your drinks, even giving a little to Chen, who had started to feel left out.

Soon you're more than full of nabe and pretty tipsy. Chen, after a few sips of sake, curls up and before you know it she's fallen asleep. Ran excuses herself to take the little cat youkai to bed, and while she's gone Yukari scooshes around the kotatsu to you and lays a perfumed hand on yours.

"I hope old Reimu didn't scare you today," she says, her lips perilously close to your face as she speaks. "She thinks she's just looking out for you. Did she say anything about us Yakumos, perhaps? That we're dangerous youkai and man-eaters or something like that?"

Embarrassed, you say that she did say something like that. Yukari takes her hand off yours and leans back on her elbows.

"I knew it," she says. "If there's one thing the miko of Hakurei excels at, it's knowing everyone else's business. If she wasn't so damnably attractive I don't know if I could stand to be around her." She sighs. "She does have a point, though. You can't stay with us forever, but I see no reason to worry about that now. It's like drinking sake, isn't it?" She indicates the bottle with a lazy sweep of a hand. "If you sit there worrying all night about how much of it is left, you can't enjoy what you have."

You hear the door to Chen's bedroom slide shut and Yukari scooshes back to her place just as Ran comes back in.

"Oh Ran," says Yukari, suddenly. "You're just in time. Won't you join us in some sake?"

Ran looks at her with barely contained surprise. "Lady Yukari?"

"I insist." She motions for Ran to sit and places a cup before her and pours her a drink, not without spilling a great deal of it. "You need the practice. You know we're always being invited to the Netherworld or Eientei or the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and I'll be damned if any Yakumo is going to come second in a drinking competition."

After Ran takes her drink, Yukari refills it and then stands up, a little unsteadily, and raising her cup she says, "Here's to Mayohiga nights. May we all enjoy them, for however long they last, and meddlesome mikos be damned!"

Both you and Ran, mutually embarrassed by the situation, raise your cups and drink, and Yukari quickly refills them. Ran tries to calm her down, but beyond wrestling the bottle of sake from her, it seems quite impossible, and so she resigns herself to her fate. A few more drinks, though, and Yukari, in the middle of a spirited mimicking of Reimu's particular style of flying which sees the contents of her cup doing more flying than she does, suddenly slumps down onto the tatami and lies there, unmoving.

You think it's part of the whole act and burst out laughing, but Ran just sighs and goes to lift her up.

"It's always like this," says the kitsune. But Ran is non-too steady herself, and when she starts to struggle with her mistress' weight, you get up to help her. You're pretty tipsy too, and the room for a moment spins around alarmingly, but you're able to keep it together and soon the two of you are half-carrying, half-dragging the mistress of Mayohiga down the corridor to her room. She might be slender, but at the moment it feels as if you're lugging a sack of potatoes around.

Ran slides the door open with her tails and goes in backwards. With one hand she fumbles around in the dark until she finds the light cord and when the room is flooded with light you can't believe how messy it is. The door to the oshi-ire is open and there are clothes everywhere - robes, dresses, garters and sets of bras and panties, covering every tatami mat. Some are even draped over the vase of flowers in the alcove as if Yukari had flung every rejected item over the back of her shoulder, which you suspect she might have.

Ran leaves you holding Yukari from behind in a sitting position on the floor while she clears a space and lays out the futon and pillow. Together, you ease Yukari down onto it and leave her there, snoring.

With a sigh, Ran switches off the light. She's making her way back across the darkened room to join you in the doorway when she suddenly yelps and falls towards you. You later find out that in clearing the floor she had thrown one of Yukari's robes over a jewellery box and it was this that she tripped over, but right now you've no idea why she's falling and you instinctively lunge forward to grab her. Ran's not exactly light herself, and as you catch her you stumble back into the corridor and bang your head against the opposite wall. As you stand there, holding Ran, her arms around your neck, her body against yours, even in a daze of pain you can't help but notice the rather large breasts that are pressing against your chest.

It only lasts for a few heartbeats, but it might as well have been forever. It's Ran who first breaks the embrace, lifting her arms from around your neck and taking a step backwards. When she places her weight on her still-tender foot she almost stumbles again, but this time as you move to grab her she places a hand firmly against your chest, stopping you.

"I'm fine," she says, the expression on her flushed face a mixture of embarrassment and gratitude. She takes a step forward, and winces, the step becoming more of a hop, and when you take her arm this time she doesn't resist. You help her into the living room and she sits back on one of the pillows near the futon, rubbing at her offending foot. You bring some ice from the kitchen for her wrapped in a tea-towel, which she takes gratefully, and then get her to lift her feet up on a pile of cushions, since you've heard that it's better to elevate an injured foot to prevent swelling.

"I think I need some more," says Ran, indicating the bottle of sake, and you don't have to be told twice. You pour her a cup and she downs it and straightaway offers the empty cup to be filled again.

"Stupid old fox," she mutters to herself. "Well, at least Lady Yukari will have a good laugh at my expense tomorrow."

You tell Ran that there's no way you'd reveal to Yukari anything about what happened, even if she tortured you. It's a rather feeble attempt at humour, but Ran laughs anyway. It's not just a polite laugh, either, but one that animates her entire face. You realise at last that you're seeing the laugh that until now you've only heard, and it's everything you expected.

Her yellow-gold eyes are alight when she finishes laughing. "Oh, it's all just so stupid. Here I am, lying back with my feet in the air, while a boy pours me drinks. It's like I'm in a host club or something." She notices your expression and smiles apologetically. "I mean, in comparison to me, you're a boy. Oh, you know what I mean. Chen's told you how old I am, right?"

You nod.

Ran is about to say something else, but stops before she does. Then she says, "I didn't mean to insult you. I would have ended up flat on my face if you hadn't been there to catch me." She looks up through her lashes at you. "You know, you're not at weak as you look."

You tell her that you weren't offended at all and that you're just happy to be able to pay her back, at least a little, for all the things she's done for you.

The comment about looking weak you let slide.

You sit together for a while, not really saying anything, just pouring and drinking sake, and to your surprise it doesn't feel at all awkward.

After a while Ran says she feels better and tries wriggling her toes and ankle. "I've no idea whether it was the ice or the elevation or the sake," she says. "But it feels fine, now. I think I can walk."

You help her up and after slipping an arm in yours she tentatively tries out her foot. This time she's able to step onto it and she sighs with relief.

"I'm off to bed," she says. "I think I've had enough excitement for one night." You still have her arm in yours, and Ran, smiling, takes it out gently. "I think I can take it from here."

You nod, hoping she doesn't notice the blush that you guess must be covering your face now from how hot it feels.

Ran begins to move away, but then she suddenly turns and slips her arms around you, hugging you to her.

Startled, you hug her back and this time, although you're almost as surprised as before, you're able to enjoy it fully. As your arms are filled with the soft over-generous curves of Ran's body you're surrounded by her scent, that warm, sunshiny scent that you've come to love so much. There's also the perfume of sake on her breath which you can smell from where she's resting her chin on your shoulder, mixed with the clean sweet smell of her short blonde hair.

"Goodnight," she says at last, breaking the embrace, but not before squeezing you one last time.

Then with a swirl of her white-tipped tails, she's gone, leaving you wondering if it all really happened. But later, as you lie in bed unable to sleep, you notice Ran's scent still lingering on you, and you know it can't have been a dream.

To be continued


	2. Chapter 2

**Mayohiga Nights**

**Ran - Part 2**

When you wake up the next morning you hear humming coming from the kitchen. Ran must already be awake. You make your way to the living room and find that everything is spotless. The ruins of the nabe, the bottle of sake - all of it's gone. It's almost as if last night never happened.

But the memory of holding Ran in your arms is too powerful to not have happened. You feel suddenly awkward about seeing her again, but before you can do anything about it the humming stops and Ran pokes her head out from the kitchen.

"So you're up at last. What would you like in your miso soup?"

You tell her you'd like aburaage. Her eyes narrow, but then she smiles winningly at you and goes back to her humming and cooking.

Not long after, something crawls into the living room from the corridor. It's Yukari, her once-elegant clothes and hair awry, clutching her head and blinking at her surroundings as if she's looking at them for the first time. She stares right through you and then stumbles past you towards the kitchen.

"Ran?" Her voice is cracked and dry.

"Lady Yukari?"

"Ran, there's a terrible humming noise making my head ache."

"It's just a hangover," says Ran with little sympathy. "You should go back to bed. I'll bring you breakfast in a moment."

Yukari shakes her head. "I'll just sit at the kotatsu." As she slinks up to it she blinks at you, finally seeing you, and says "Good morning."

You both sit down and Ran brings breakfast in. Chen comes out, dressed in a night gown and rubbing her eyes, and when she sees you she yelps and runs back into her room. She comes back in her house clothes and sits at the kotatsu, trying to hide her blush by staring down at her bowl of rice.

Yukari stares down at her own food as if trying to work out what it is.

"It's rice porridge," says Ran. "With tea and wasabi mixed in."

"I know what it is, Ran," mutters Yukari. "It's just... I'm just..." In mid-sentence she leaps up and races to the bathroom.

When she returns at last she looks much better and falls on the food with a vengeance. The rest of the meal passes without incident. With Ran eating on your left, you sneak a glance at her now and then, wondering if everything really did happen last night as you remember it. You want to ask her how her foot is, but you don't want to embarrass her and decide to wait for when you're alone with her.

Alone with Ran. The thought of it starts your heart racing. You wonder if Yukari will soon go back to bed, whether Chen will be going out to visit friends or hang around the house or...

"Is everything okay?" Ran asks you, and you realise that you've been staring at her the whole time. She blinks her big yellow-gold eyes at you, but not with the annoyance you might have expected. If anything, there's teasing humour hidden deep within them.

"Everything's delicious," you say, and as soon as the words escape your mouth you feel like a total idiot. It's obvious from the way she said it that she wasn't asking about the food.

But Ran just smiles and you turn your attention back to the meal in front of you before anyone notices the blush that's started to flood across your face.

The rest of the morning you spend helping Chen with her chores. It's a relief not to be in sight of Ran, although it's hard to stop thinking about her and what she's doing. With the energetic Chen with you, though, you soon find enough to distract you. She seems to enjoy having someone to help her draw the water from the well, put out the laundry and the myriad of other little things that always need to be done around Mayohiga. You notice there are a few more masculine jobs around the place that need doing as well - the eaves on the east side of the house, for example, are in real need of repainting - but when you suggest doing them, Ran forbids you with a shake of her head.

"If you injure yourself just before Eirin's visit, it will look like I've been mistreating you," she says.

Eirin arrives just after lunch, and when you see her you realise that you've met her before. But the memory is from a time of pain and delirium, and so recognising her is like recognising someone from the dim past or from a half-remembered dream.

She's very different from the Yakumos. Her beauty is almost ethereal - maybe it's her stardust-white hair or her eyes, grey like the sky in the early evening, that makes the word jump to mind - and there's the way she walks, as if she's somehow impossibly light and could float off at any moment. There's certainly something otherworldly about her, so you're not at all surprised later when Chen tells you she's originally from the moon.

"Although it's kind of a secret," she adds, placing a finger against her lips.

The moon, huh? Nothing surprises you much now.

Other than that, Eirin's manner is very similar to every other doctor you've known - the professional politeness, the methodical movements as she checks you all over, the cold hands. Ran hovers nearby, strangely expressionless, as if she's thinking about something far removed from what's happening right in front of her. But when Eirin gives you a clean bill of health, her expression softens as relief floods across her face.

"He's much better, but he should still avoid doing anything strenuous for a while," says Eirin as she puts away the bizarre assortment of gadgets that she's been poking and prodding you with into her bag. The way she refers to you in the third person even though you're right next to her makes you feel like a little kid, but rather than being humiliating, it's strangely comforting.

Ran begins to say something, hesitates, and then finally finds her voice. "Is he well enough to go back home, do you think?"

It's the question you've been dreading as well. Eirin looks at Ran and then at you, and her grey eyes glimmer for a second. Then she smiles and says, "I think, in the interests of being cautious, that he should remain in Gensoukyou for the time being. I'll talk to Yukari about it."

Ran smiles and thanks her, then suggests that she stay for tea. You ask to be excused - after being poked everywhere with cold instruments you feel a need to get out into the sunlight, and Chen said that she was going to teach you how to fish with your bare hands after she finished her chores.

"Have fun," says Ran, shooing you playfully out the door.

You've been wandering around the grounds trying to find Chen for a while when you find yourself retracing your steps and walking past the window to the living room again. You catch Ran's voice, and the difference in her tone makes you stop and listen. You know it's eavesdropping, but for once Ran seems to be speaking without any reserve. She and Eirin are chatting like old friends, which you realise they must be.

"What do you mean, 'has something happened'?"

Eirin's voice is teasing. "It's just that you seem to be, well, _glowing_."

Playful annoyance. "'_Glowing'_?"

"It's not a medical diagnosis," says Eirin. "More of a hunch, but..." Then she whispers something you can't catch.

Ran's voice is shocked. "I'm not pregnant!"

"Well, it must be something else, then." The delicate clatter of a teacup. "You certainly seemed relieved when I suggested the boy stay a while longer."

"He's a bit too old to be called a boy," says Ran.

"Perhaps. He seems very sweet." The sipping of tea. "Is he?"

A sound of choking, then the soft slapping of a back being patted.

"You shouldn't try and breathe tea, Ran. It can damage the airways."

A series of coughs, then: "Thank you for your medical opinion, Eirin."

"Anyway," continues Eirin. "I'm happy to see this change in you, whatever the reason. I've been worried about you recently, though I haven't said anything. You seemed to be becoming a little - how should I put this? - old-maid-ish."

"What?"

"Why, just the other day I heard you say 'My, my'."

"I've never said 'My, my' in my life!"

"Trust me, Ran. You did. I heard it."

Ran sighs. "So maybe I did. So what?"

"I know it's very easy to forget about your own needs when all you do day-in and day-out is look after Yukari and Chen. But what do you think five-tailed Ran would say if she could see you now, fussing around in an apron, chopping up daikon and saying 'My, my'?"

"That's not really fair," says Ran. "I know I was a bit wild when I was younger, but that was my old life, before I became Yukari's shikigami and-"

"Wildness is not something you lose, Ran. You're a kitsune. Yes, it's true that over time the blood can cool, but when something - or someone - comes along and triggers it, well..."

Silence.

Then Ran sighs, defeated. "Alright, I admit it, Eirin. I'm enjoying having him around. It's nice to have someone else to talk to, and he... he appreciates me. You know what Yukari's like, and Chen, well, she is a dear little thing, but it's just not the same..."

"Not the same as being appreciated by a male, right?"

Silence again, longer this time.

Then finally Eirin's voice.

"So what's the problem, then? Just a friendly word of advice from your physician, though. Humans are fragile, so when you finally do jump him, be careful not to break anyth..."

A shriek from Ran, a cry from Eirin and then the sounds of playful fighting mixed with laughter.

You use the opportunity to slip away.

Your heart is beating hard and you have to stop for a moment and lean against the porch as your chest tightens with a mixture of shock and excitement.

You replay everything you just heard in your head, trying to find evidence that somehow you misunderstood what happened. It's true, Ran didn't say anything definite, exactly, but there was something... and last night, when she hugged you...

The thought that Ran might like you that way fills you with suddenly painful arousal.

You're still in this state when Chen finds you. The little cat youkai skips up and you try to answer her questions with as little fluster as possible and make a terrible job of it. She looks at you, bewildered by your behaviour, but when you remind her that she was going to teach you how to fish, she claps her hands in delight and all the awkwardness is forgotten.

It turns out that in your current mental state it's almost impossible to learn how to do anything. Chen tries to teach you the gentle art of tickling fish from underneath to make them leap out of the water so you can catch them, but although the whole tickling thing is easy enough, every fish you try to grab eludes you. Eventually you give up, but Chen doesn't really seem all that disappointed at the failure of her student, since she's lapping up all the praise you've been giving her as you watch her snatch fish after fish out of the water.

There's more than enough fish for dinner and Ran fixes sashimi. You've never had freshwater fish sashimi before, but as usual, Ran's food is delicious. Yukari doesn't come to dinner and Ran, with a discrete wink hidden from Chen, tells you that she's been asleep all day.

The wink makes you smile, and Ran returns it, but her smile soon changes from one of shared amusement about Yukari's sleeping habits: the edges of her lips soften, her yellow-gold eyes alight with something more than just humour. It's a look that makes your heart beat faster.

The two of you are gazing at each other for maybe three heartbeats when Ran lowers her eyes, her cheeks pink, as if she's been caught doing something she shouldn't have.

Chen saves you from having to hide your own blush by accidentally dropping a piece of fish into her soy sauce. There's an audible 'plop' and a little tsunami of black sauce ends up on the table. Ran's exasperated sigh as she goes to get something to clean it up and Chen's apology quickly return you to the normal comfortable domesticity of the dinner table.

It's later, when you're all drinking tea and eating mochi around the kotatsu, that Yukari finally wakes up and joins you. Despite her bed-hair and the rather slovenly state of her nightclothes, it looks as though she's recovered at last from the previous evening. She devours the mochi and from her teasing jokes she seems to be in an excellent mood.

"So you've been given a clean bill of health? What wonderful news! I can't wait to let Reimu know and make her choke on her words." She looks at you askance through twinkling violet eyes. "Eirin left me a note saying that we should keep you here a little longer as travelling across the border is still potentially dangerous for you. I have no issue with that."

You're suffused with relief, and Ran must have given some similar sign too, for Yukari's eyes are drawn to her. "I see you're happy with the news, Ran," she says with a cryptic smile.

Ran is startled, but quickly recovers and with a straight face she says, "I'm just pleased to hear I won't have to carry him around everywhere anymore."

Yukari turns her still-smiling face towards you. "So what did you think of Eirin?"

You say that she seemed very nice. The lameness of your response is due partly to the suddenness of the question and partly because it brings back to your mind in startling vividness the conversation between her and Ran you overheard. Yukari goes on the attack.

"Is that a blush I see? I guess there's no arguing about taste. She's not unattractive in her own lunarian way, although her hands do tend to wander and they never, ever seem to be warm. Well, this piece of news will be sure to delight you, then." She takes a sip of her tea as if to increase the drama of the announcement. "We've all been invited to the full moon festival at Eientei."

You look to Ran and Chen, expecting some kind of surprise or delight or at least a reaction, especially after how Yukari built it up. But they just sit there.

"But, Lady Yukari, we're invited every month," says Ran.

"And we never go," adds Chen.

"Didn't you say you find all the moon rabbits boring?" asks Ran.

"Ah yes, well," says Yukari. "Be that as it may, I thought perhaps our human friend might like to see Eientei. It'll be a once in a lifetime opportunity. You know how difficult it is to find, usually, and nigh impossible for humans given how dangerous the Bamboo Forest is."

"Come to think of it, it might be fun to go for once," says Ran. Her face, despite her attempt to retain its professional expressionlessness, has become animated.

"I'm sure you'll be happy for the opportunity to spend time with your crush," Yukari says to you with a wink.

You glance at Ran but by now she's regained control of her expression and her eyes make only the lightest flicker in your direction. You hope that Yukari's teasing hasn't given her the wrong idea.

The next day is over even before you have a chance to notice it passing. You've spent the day with Chen and haven't really seen much of either Ran or Yukari, and so as the two of you walk back to the house in the late afternoon you're gripped with excitement at the thought of seeing her again.

Her. There's only one _her_ in your life right now: the beautiful kitsune with the yellow-gold eyes. Your thoughts have been with her all day and Chen has mentioned the distracted, far-away look on your face more than once.

The truth is, you've been struggling to come to terms with the sudden intensity of your feelings for Ran. For a while you wondered if it all wasn't just some childish fixation with her, some mother-complex or nurse-patient crush gone too far. But even if it started that way, you realise that the way you feel about her now is all too real. It's stolen up on you without you even noticing. Was it love at first sight? Was your heart stung by those gentle yellow-gold eyes, the first thing you ever saw in Gensoukyou?

You're amused at how sentimental your thoughts have become. But it's not just sentimentality. You feel an overpowering physical yearning to see Ran as well. And so, when she opens the door to the house as Chen and you step onto the porch, your heart stops.

Ran is dressed in a dark-blue kimono, embroidered with a spiral flame design sown in gold and tied with an intricate obi; it does great justice to her voluptuous figure. But it's her face that draws your greatest appreciation. It's the first time you've seen her made-up: her face, made pale with powder in the traditional Japanese manner, with vivid crimson lipstick worn as you've often seen it on fox-masks at festivals, not just on her lips but also in fine, curving lines at the corner of her mouth and her eyes. Her head is bare and with her ears on full display they only add to her exotic and striking beauty.

Somehow, the Ran you've known until now, the one who has helped you to dress and cooked your meals and done your laundry, has always been this regal, mysterious and elegant woman as well.

The expression on her face, however, is familiar - one of stern exasperation.

"Where have you two been?" she cries. "You have to get dressed!"

Inside, you find Yukari is dressed in an exquisite canary-yellow kimono similar in style to Ran's. However, there is a distinctly aggressive eroticism in the way that she has decided to wear it. Hanging loosely from her shoulders as if it will fall off at any moment, it leaves exposed the expanse of pink flesh from her neck right down to the plunging depth of her ample cleavage. Her obi is even more intricately tied than Ran's, but for all its myriad folds and knots it gives off the distinct impression that it could be unravelled from her body with a single firm tug in the right direction if she wanted it to.

Thankfully, you don't have to make any effort to tear your eyes away from her as Ran is already whirling you into your room, leaving a delighted Yukari with the rare opportunity of helping Chen get dressed.

With military efficiency Ran strips you to your underwear and helps you into some hakama. She works in almost total silence, only opening her mouth to tell you to lift or move a part of your body to help her. The obi is the hardest thing, being wound and wound around your waist until you find it hard to breathe. She has you slip on some geta and then steps back to admire her handiwork.

The face of the professional Ran, the lady-in-waiting of Yukari and the domestic mistress of Mayohiga, melts away at once with a huge grin. Her eyes glimmer.

"You know, you look very handsome," she says. "But something is missing."

She walks up and slips her hands onto your waist. You must have looked as surprised as you felt, as the expression on her own face is one of mischievous teasing. She pulls your obi out a little with one hand and slips a fan she had hidden in the other into it.

She steps back and nods appreciatively. "A man can't be without a fan at a formal event," she says. "Yukari wanted you to wear a sword, but I was worried that you might cut yourself. Humans don't wear swords any more on the Outside, do they?"

You nod and smile in response since all you can think about is how good she smelled when she was next to you. You're glad she doesn't smother herself in scent like Yukari does, since her natural scent is so nice, like sun-dried laundry. But tonight, for whatever reason, it is richer than usual, deeper and maddeningly sexy.

Ran approaches you and lifts her hand as if to take yours, but then obviously thinks better of it and instead turns and makes for the door.

"We'd better check on how Lady Yukari and Chen are getting on," she says with her back to you. "I hope she hasn't been too rough with her."

You walk in to find the mistress of Mayohiga admiring her handiwork: a shivering and traumatised Chen.

Yukari has dressed her in a similar to fashion to herself, with the kimono hanging loosely from her shoulders. Chen has no cleavage to speak of, really, but there is something undeniably charming about the amount of pale skin that has suddenly been revealed. This mixture of innocence and eroticism is accentuated by the childishness of the design of Chen's kimono: red goldfish against a canary-yellow background with an obi tied in the shape of butterfly wings. The whole tableau is made all the more awkwardly sensual by Chen's blushing nervousness as she struggles to keep the kimono from slipping off her body.

As soon as she sees Ran she squeals and rushes into the kitsune's waiting embrace.

"Lady Yukari," says Ran sternly, holding the shivering cat-girl. "Don't you think she'll catch cold?"

"We all have to learn to make sacrifices in the quest for elegance," says Yukari with a sniff.

With a few strategic tugs and tucks and pulls, Ran conceals most of the flesh that Yukari has taken pains to reveal. Although Yukari is pouting and muttering about Ran's prudishness, you can't help but agree with Ran that Chen suits the 'cute' rather than 'sexy' look.

While Yukari indulges in a few last-minute fiddling operations with her ornate hair, she gives you the once-over. There is teasing appreciation in her eyes and she breaks into a grin.

She turns to Ran. "He scrubs up quite well, doesn't he?"

Ran makes no reply but nods with the submissive and emotionless expression you've come to expect of her usual interactions with her mistress.

Yukari claps her hands. "Well, let's not keep the rabbits waiting!" and with that she runs a serpentine hand through the air and wherever her long lacquered nails pass a great black rent appears in space itself.

Ran sees you quail at the thought of travelling through the gap and steps beside you.

"There's nothing to worry about," she says softly in your ear.

The gap yawns open like the maw of some inter-dimensional creature and Yukari steps into it, followed quickly by Chen. The fact that the little cat girl shows absolutely no fear goes some way to calming you, but not nearly as much as when you feel Ran's hand slip into your own.

You turn to look at her. She smiles and squeezes your hand, then draws you alongside her as she steps forward into the gap.

You glimpse the squirming eyes and clutching black hands for only a second, and then you're through...

...into a whirling tumult of noise and excitement.

As you look around, struggling to take everything in, you feel Ran's hand slip from yours.

You've stepped out into the courtyard of a stately Japanese mansion, lit everywhere with red lanterns and filled with a great crowd of people. In front of you, Yukari and Chen are already disappearing into the crowd. But now you see that rather than people, they're youkai - the rabbit ears are a dead giveaway. They're all dressed in kimono, talking and eating and drinking and laughing. Above the lively murmur of voices you hear a rhythmic thudding, and as you and Ran make your way forward into the crowd yourselves you see where it's coming from: in the centre of the courtyard there are several huge stone mortars, and around each of them a pair of rabbits is taking turns to swing the long, wooden mallets in their hands. You realise immediately that they're making mochi, just like in the fairy tales, and a grin at the sheer charming unbelievability of the scene springs onto your face. But this is Gensoukyou, after all, and here fairy tales are reality.

A smiling rabbit comes up beside you and hands you and Ran red lacquer cups - they're really more like wide bowls, the sort usually used only in religious rituals in the Outside World - and quickly pours rice wine into them from a huge bottle almost as big as she is before bowing and disappearing back into the crowd

You take a sip. It's powerful stuff, with a strange undercurrent of flavour that you can't quite put your finger on, but which is distinctly herbal.

Ran lowers the bowl from her red lips and says, "Be a little careful. Eirin is always trying out new medicines and you never know when some might accidentally get slipped into your drink. Not by her, of course, but..." She moves closer. "Eientei has a well-known prankster called Tewi. She's the Rabbit of Good Fortune and while she doesn't mean any harm, she can sometimes be..."

Ran's voice drops away and you see her eyes turn downwards and to your left. You follow them to discover a rabbit standing beside you. She's far shorter than the others, little taller than a child, with long, lop ears and wide red eyes that are sparkling with a look of naivety you suspect is well-rehearsed.

"Ran, I'm hurt," says the little rabbit. "I would never, ever slip one of the boss's drugs into anyone's drink..." The innocent look suddenly flees as the corners of her mouth curl upwards, transforming her expression into one of wicked cunning. "...unless it was _funny_, of course."

Ran smiles back at her, displaying her canines. "I hope no 'funny' things happen to my friend here tonight, Tewi. He's just arrived from the Outside World and he's still quite unfamiliar with Gensoukyou."

"Oh, Eirin's told us all about you," says Tewi. She holds out a hand and you realise she wants to shake yours. "This is how it's done in the Outside World, as far as I remember."

You take her hand and it immediately pops off, leaving you standing there holding it and wondering what in the hell just happened. Do some youkai come to pieces just like that?

But Tewi has already pulled her real hand out of the sleeve of her kimono and is wiggling it in front of your face.

"Ta da!" She points at the hand that you're still holding in your own and says, "Lucky rabbit's foot. The rabbit that used to own it was really lucky, up until the moment he lost it. I can let you have it cheap..."

Ran snatches it from you and hands it back to her, unsmiling. "He's not a child, Tewi."

At that moment Chen runs up, eating a piece of mochi, which she quickly shoves in her mouth as she grabs Ran's hand.

"Ran-shama! Ran-shama! Yukari-shama is wondering where you are. Come on!"

You go to make your apologies to Tewi, but the little rabbit has already disappeared. You turn around and take a single step forward and your belt begins to unravel.

Luckily Ran is there and she quickly ties it back up before your hakama falls off you.

"Like I said, you should be careful." She shakes her head, but you do notice the hint of a smile on her lips. "That little menace."

Chen leads you and Ran to a corner of the courtyard where an ancient pine tree is standing. Beneath it, you see Yukari and Eirin and a woman dressed in flowing robes with long, black hair like a waterfall of ink. The face she turns towards you as you approach is round and as pale as fresh snow, her eyes wide and dark. She is ethereally beautiful, like some fragile celestial spirit, but the smile that appears on her face is unexpectedly warm and homely.

You realise that this must be Princess Kaguya, the exile from the moon.

Nervousness grips you. You've never been in the presence of a real princess before and you ask Ran in a hurried whisper how deeply you should bow. Ran chuckles and explains that Kaguya is very down-to-earth and that you don't have to worry about that sort of thing around her.

Ran, as usual, is right. After introducing yourself, you find that the Princess is very different from what you had expected a princess to be like. In a lot of ways, actually, she appears almost as naïve as you are about things in Gensoukyou and you recall Ran having mentioned that she's led a very sheltered life. But she's genuinely interested in everything you can tell her about the Outside World, and the barrage of excited questions comes so quickly that you're thankful to Yukari when she interposes herself in the conversation and turns it around to current lunar politics.

A lively discussion ensues that you're completely unable to follow. Ran is soon swept up in it as well and you stand there, drinking, for a while, hoping for someone to rescue you.

Suddenly you feel someone take hold of your sleeve and you turn, expecting to see Chen. Instead it's Eirin. She tilts her head and arches her eyebrows and you realise that she's asking you to come with her. You turn to the others, still deep in the conversation, and start making some grimaces that you hope will be taken as an apology, but Ran is the only one who takes any notice. She gives a little shrug and a smile, and so you turn and go with Eirin.

She leads you away from the worst press of the chattering and drinking rabbits along a colonnade lit by red lanterns. Above you, the moon shines down clear as a silver dollar hanging in the night. Eirin looks up at it and sighs.

"These festivals always make me feel homesick," she says. "I guess you must be feeling homesick as well by now." Eirin looks you over and nods appreciatively. "You do look much better. I suppose you'll be making plans to leave us soon."

Your stomach sinks at the thought. You mutter something about not being in any real hurry to leave.

The smile that slides onto Eirin's face is enigmatic, her eyes not moving from yours. "But surely," she continues, "Your family and girlfriend will be missing you by now."

Confused emotions arise in you and you want to answer everything at once, but all you manage to blurt out is that you don't have a girlfriend.

"Well," says Eirin. "That's good news for some lucky girl in Gensoukyou then, isn't it? Perhaps you'd like to meet my apprentice, Reisen. She's single as well."

You mutter that you're not really looking for anyone at the moment but Eirin is already waving someone over to you.

You realise you've already seen Reisen at a distance before. She's dressed in a suit, with black jacket and trousers and a red tie worn slightly askew across her white blouse. So this is Eirin's apprentice? You thought she was a bodyguard or something.

Reisen takes a shy step in your direction, but it's obviously not fast enough for Eirin's liking and she leaves your side to drag her over. Reisen seems just as unwilling a victim of Eirin's matchmaking as you are, and so you decide against making yourself scarce as you'd seriously considered doing.

As Eirin bustles her closer, you see Reisen's face clearly for the first time. Under your gaze, a shy and awkward smile appears on her lips and you realise she's actually really good looking. Her face has an innocent openness that you've seldom seen on youkai other than Chen, and as she blinks her big red eyes you're gripped by an odd dizziness. They're unusually intense eyes, and despite their naïve hugeness they feel as if they're looking deep into you.

"This is Reisen, my apprentice," says Eirin, grinning. The two of you make hasty, somewhat uncomfortable introductions. "She's really almost as new to the earthly part of Gensoukyou as you are, so I'm sure the two of you will have a lot in common." And with that, Eirin leaves the two of you alone to get to know each other.

As it turns out you really don't have that much in common. Reisen is kind and cheerful and tries very hard, but the two of you quickly exhaust your limited supply of conversation. The silence between you is starting to get awkward when you see a tray being held out to you from someone in the nearby press of rabbits. It's the mochi that the rabbits have made for the Moon Festival, and you grab onto it like someone throwing you a lifeline.

"Thank you!" says Reisen as you hand her the little plate with its tiny bamboo knife. She beams a smile at you and there's so much cheerfulness and simple joy in it that for a moment you wish you really did have something in common with this pretty rabbit girl. She cuts a slice of the mochi and pops it into her mouth while you take a bite of your own.

It tastes not dissimilar to kashiwa mochi, but with a slight medicinal aftertaste. You mention it to Reisen and she nods, still chewing.

"Lady Eirin is always trying out new formulations of her medicine," she says. When she sees the alarmed look on your face, she quickly adds: "Oh, but they're always perfectly safe. From the taste of this I'm pretty sure that it's one of her formulations for revitalising the body."

It seems Reisen is right. Your body has definitely started to feel warmer, as if someone has attached a hose filled with warm water to the top of your head. It's a very pleasant sensation. Reisen appears to be feeling its effects as well. She smiles at you and shifts the neck of her blouse a little.

"Is it warm here or is it just me?" she asks. You say it's definitely getting warmer.

"Maybe we should move away from these lights a little," she says, her face flushed. You nod, feeling a drop of wetness on your temple. You're starting to sweat.

You look around for Ran in the crowd and finally spot her. She's still stuck with Yukari and Kaguya, and when she notices you she rolls her eyes in exasperation at her situation. Then she spots Reisen and the expression on her face cools somewhat. She arches her eyebrows, a question in her big yellow-gold eyes, and you try to communicate back to her your own sense of being trapped. She smiles and shrugs, and you guess you must have been able to communicate it to her somehow.

Then Reisen takes hold of your hand and starts to drag you away. The touch of her hand, its softness and warmth, fills you with a sudden erotic thrill, and you find yourself unable to protest. She leads you into the darkened grounds away from the partygoers and the light of the lamps, then stops and leans back against a stand of bamboo. Behind her, the forest is a maze of moonlit shadows.

Reisen complains again about being hot as she slips off her jacket and throws it to the ground. Her tie quickly joins it and soon she's undone the top three buttons of her shirt. She's wearing a black lacy bra and the tops of her surprisingly large breasts heave as she breathes heavily.

"Oh, why am I so hot?" she almost squeals, grabbing you by the shoulders. The touch of her sets your mind reeling with rising sexual excitement. Your arms have a mind of their own, slipping around her and bringing her panting and half-naked body against yours, making the rabbit gasp in shock and delight.

"Kiss me," she breathes, lifting her face up towards yours. She's so vulnerable and eager and beautiful that you can't stop yourself from leaning down and bringing your lips against hers. The soft, warm sweetness of them is like honey against your mouth.

Suddenly, fireworks: the real thing, as all around you fireworks start to explode, splashing fiery, lurid colour across the mansion grounds. Reisen squeals again, this time in alarm, and you grab her and drag her out of the sudden minefield of starbursts and fountains and whirling sparks that are seemingly everywhere.

Clapping and shouts of delight erupt from the direction of the mansion, and you quickly realise it's not for the fireworks, but for you and Reisen. And mixed with it is giggling laughter, coming from somewhere above you.

Tewi floats down out of the sky, her face lit up with the flickering red fire of a nearby Catherine wheel, giving it a demonic cast. She laughs and claps her hands and spirals about in delight.

"Oh, as soon as I saw you I knew I just had to make you part of my pranks!"

Reisen is as sober as you are now, and she just stands there, staring, You're gripped by the conflicting desires of getting the hell out of there and of trying to fix the situation, but after a moment's indecision you step between Reisen and the crowd, shielding her as she does up the buttons to her shirt with trembling fingers. The smile she flashes at you is weak but grateful. It's obvious that this sort of thing happens to her all the time.

Eirin pushes her way out of the still joking crowd, a look of dark displeasure on her face. "Tewi, you come down here right this instant and apologise!"

The little rabbit sighs and with a hang-dog expression on her face she makes for the ground. "I was just trying to help things along," she says. "I think they'd make a cute couple."

Eirin picks up the discarded plate and sniffs it. "An aphrodisiac? How many times have I told you to keep your little paws out of my..."

By now you've decided the best thing to do is make yourself as scarce as possible. You're slinking your way back where you left Yukari and Ran with Princess Kaguya when Chen comes running up and breathlessly asks the same question that's on your lips.

"Do you know where Ran-sama is?"

You shake your head, and the two of you go looking for her together. Chen decides to look on the near side of the mansion and you take the right. As you search a terrible dread settles over your heart.

When you finally find Ran it's not really that far away from where the whole Reisen incident occurred. She's standing in the dark, looking out into the bamboo forest. There's no one else around. The air is thick with the smell of expended fireworks.

She doesn't notice you until you're almost beside her. She turns her head at the sound of your geta on the grass, but immediately turns away when she realises it's you. You stop, sensing something wrong.

"It's alright," she says finally, without turning her head, her voice floating across to you through the darkness. "I know what happened. It was Tewi, one of her pranks. I'm- I'm not angry at you or anything like that. But please. Just leave me alone. I need a little while to-"

You tell her you can't leave her as she is. You move alongside her and take her hand in yours. She turns to look at you, but there's no anger in her eyes, just the remains of tears. Her eyeliner is running, her lipstick smeared, and she raises a hand to her face and smiles with chagrin.

"I guess I must look a sight," she says. She makes no move to drop your hand and for a moment you stand there together, hand in hand, in the darkness. The warmth and the softness of that hand is maddening, but the difference between this and what happened with Reisen under the effect of the magic aphrodisiac is stark. Rather than the joy you had expected, there is only awkwardness. Even with her hand in yours, a gulf has opened between the two of you.

"Why did you come here?" asks Ran at last. The question seems not really directed to you, more to the darkness all around, but you answer it anyway, muttering something lame about fate.

"Fate?" Ran laughs. It's a terrible sound, a laugh so utterly different from the bright and cheerful one you've grown used to hearing. It's tired and self-mocking. You drop her hand and step back, about to say something, when Chen comes running up.

"Ran-sama?" When she sees her mistress' tear-stained face, she turns on you, her teeth bared. "Did you do something to upset Ran-sama?"

"No, Chen," says Ran softly. "The only one who's done anything to upset me is _me_."

Chen looks confused, but her anger drains away. You're thankful, since it was disconcerting to see the usually cheerful creature's face so disfigured by it.

It's then that you notice the strong scent of a familiar floral perfume and Yukari is suddenly beside the three of you. She looks from Ran to you then back again, her face disconcerting with an unusual lack of expression.

"Take the children home, Ran," she says, her voice betraying no specific emotion. "I'll join you later. There are a few things you and I have to discuss, but it will have to wait until tomorrow."

Yukari runs her nails down through the air, making a gap in space. For once the squirming eyes don't horrify you. You're too confused and knotted up inside to even really notice them.

But what makes you feel genuinely sick is that this time, when you step through the gap, you do so without Ran's hand in yours.

_To be continued_


	3. Chapter 3

**Mayohiga Nights**

**Ran - Part 3**

Ran has just put Chen to bed and disappeared into the bathroom to take off her makeup. You haven't said anything to her since you've returned to Mayohiga. You went back to your room, but recoiled from the thought of lying there on the bed in the dark and instead made your way outside onto the porch. Sitting on it, you stare out across the glowing fields. The landscape of Gensoukyou is just as beautiful under the veil of night. Even with the great yellow moon covering everything with its buttery light, the stars are still visible, a wide white-speckled wash of brilliance from one horizon to the other. Without electric lights, you can see a billion stars you've never seen before.

The sight should be uplifting, but for you it merely highlights how much you've lost.

Your eyes grow hot. The only thing you can think about is Ran. But your earlier images of her, those beautiful memories of her smiling at you across the kotatsu, of her running her hand through your hair, and especially the delightful weight of her cradled in your arms, have all been replaced by the look of despair you saw on her face, that unhappy, mocking laughter.

"Fate?" she had laughed.

Why did you come here?

Maybe it is time for you to go.

You hear the slide of the amadoa, but you don't turn around. You feel too fragile, and if it's Ran that's standing there, you have a terrible feeling that the tears that are threatening in your eyes will start to spill out.

After a while, you hear her step out onto the porch. You know it's Ran.

She sits down beside you, staring out with you into the deep shadows of the night. Silence, except for the scattered sounds of crickets and the gentle shimmering of the forest in the breeze. Ran's scent is all about you, and you squeeze your eyes shut, hoping you can hold back the tears long enough for her to leave.

"I'm sorry about what happened," she says, breaking the silence at last. "I- I guess I overreacted. Eirin was just trying to make me jealous, and then Tewi had to come along and..."

Ran falls silent and for a long while you're both sitting there, not saying anything. There's a tension in the air, and you realise that something has irrevocably changed between you. Your heart is beating hard, so hard that you begin to worry that Ran can hear it.

Finally Ran sighs. She takes your chin in her hand and turns your head to face her. There is no trace left of the regal being of several hours ago. She looks tired, fragile, and old. There is sadness in her red-rimmed yellow-gold eyes and on the wan smile that struggles to survive on her lips.

"This has gone far enough, I think," she says, dropping her hand and turning away to stare back out into the darkness. "I'm sorry to have led you along. It was cruel of me and I should have known better. But I think you know now, don't you, that nothing can ever happen between us?"

Your voice threatens to sticks in your throat, but you manage to say that no, you don't know that. You're still struggling to find the right words to express what you want to say, buffeted by conflicting emotions, when Ran reaches over and pats the back of your hand.

There is something hideously cold and final about the way she does it.

"Youkai and humans are... too different," she says. Her voice is rehearsed, and you hate the tone of it. It's as if all the closeness that had developed between the two of you has dissolved away, returning everything to the way it was when you first met her all those days ago. "Reimu probably said something like that to you the other day."

You mutter something in reply.

Ran sighs. "I know you're angry. But it... it has to be like this. What happened tonight was a warning, I suppose. If I'd let things continue, you'd have ended up getting hurt even more. We'd have ended up getting hurt more."

You open your mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. You have the horrible sensation of falling into some deep well, its darkness, like the darkness of the night outside, pressing in on you.

Ran takes your silence as agreement.

"Shall we just be friends, then?" she asks.

Your eyes are burning and your chest feels as though your ribcage has become a vice, crushing your heart. You force yourself to turn and look at her: those yellow-gold eyes you've fallen in love with, the sad smile that you can't stand seeing on her face.

Fate.

Fate brought you to Gensoukyou, and now it's going to pull you and Ran apart.

But only if you let it.

You lift your hand and brush away a lock of her short blonde hair from the side of her face. You let it linger there, your fingertips against her temple, your palm cupping her chin. You expect her to pull away, but instead she just closes her eyes.

You stroke the side of her face gently, your fingertips feather-light. Maybe you're afraid of breaking her, somehow, she's so fragile and beautiful in that moment. She sighs, so softly it's little more than an exhalation of breath, and then she turns her face towards your caresses. She lifts a hand and takes hold of yours and for a moment you think she's going to move it away, but instead she brings it to her lips and kisses it.

"Do you really want such a stupid old fox?" she mutters.

You don't say anything and just lean forward and bring your lips against hers.

In that moment, time and space hang motionless, as if crystallised. If your heart is beating, you don't feel it. All you can feel is the softness of Ran's lips against yours, the warmth of her breath, scented with the perfume of rice wine and the sweetness of mochi. You open your lips, and hers do as well, and after the lightest touch of your tongues you break the kiss.

She opens her eyes. There is a pinkness in her cheeks and her lips curl up into a smile you've never seen before. It's sultry, and almost predatory.

"Are you really that inexperienced, or are you just teasing me?" she asks. Then it's her turn to lean forward into the kiss, but this time she lifts her hands and cups your face as your lips meet. She won't let you move away again.

The tip of her tongue, hot and wet, slips between your lips and she kisses you deeply, her fingers trembling as she runs them through your hair. You kiss her back, slipping your tongue across the smoothness of her teeth. Ran tilts her head and her tongue attacks yours from another direction.

You're both breathless when she finally breaks the kiss.

"You taste like mochi," she says, licking her lips. "And rice wine."

You tell her she does too.

"I think I could just sit here and kiss you all night," she says. "But I don't think you'll be satisfied with that. I don't think I will, either." She gets to her feet and taking hold of your hand leads you back into the house.

"Shall we use your room?" she whispers. "Chen's is right next to mine and..."

You nod. As you push open the door, the eyes she turns on you are hot, glistening like molten gold.

"I sometimes get loud," she explains.

She sits down on the edge of the bed and pulls you down next to her. She keeps hold of your hand, cradling it in her lap, and together the two of you sit there, neither saying anything.

You mention Yukari and Ran chuckles softly. "She'll be up all night drinking and arguing with the Princess," she says. "I wouldn't worry about her. But we do need to be quiet. I don't want Chen bursting in on us and getting traumatised."

You chuckle at the image. Ran sighs and rests her head on your shoulder

"You know," she says, looking up at you shyly through her thick lashes. "There's something I want to ask you, but..."

You tell her to go right ahead.

"How old are you?" she asks.

You tell her. She exhales.

"That young?" She slips her hand onto your lap and moves forward to kiss your neck. "This is very likely criminal, then. Maybe that's why it's so exciting." The words, as she whispers them, are hot against your skin.

The touch of her lips as she runs them across your neck, the tiny licks and bites of your skin, soon have you gripping the mattress in excitement. Ran chuckles to herself.

"I guess you like being teased," she says. She begins to busy herself with untying the top of your hakama. It's soon off and after folding it she places it neatly on the floor. "Say banzai!" she says. You lift your arms and she slides your undershirt off, which quickly joins your hakama.

Ran runs her fingers across your chest and smiles secretively. "It's kind of disappointing, because I already know what you look like naked. But I guess you're interested in finding out about me, right?"

With deft hands she undoes the intricate obi behind her back. She folds it and lays it aside. Her kimono has slipped a little from her shoulder while she was untying her obi, exposing pale skin from her neck down to the top of her ample breasts.

Ran lifts her hands to the collar of her kimono and then stops, considering you with heat in her eyes.

"Maybe you want to do it for me?"

You don't need any more encouragement than that. You slip your hands under the material of the collar, but she quickly traps your hands under her own.

"Before you do, though, please promise to be kind to me. I am over a thousand years old after all."

Your reply is to kiss her, and as you slide both sides of her kimono from her shoulders you draw your lips down over her chin and neck and along her collarbone.

Ran is breathing heavier now, and you feel her chest rising and falling against your lips as you kiss even lower. Her skin is unbelievably soft, and her wild scent envelopes you as your lips trace the valley between her breasts.

"Please," she whispers, pulling your head against her chest. "Please. You know what I want."

What man, in this or any other world, could refuse such a plea?

Ran slumps forward with a gasp, her hair a mass of sweat, her face flushed, her eyes hooded, her lips slack and open.

You throw your arms around her and crush her to you. Her head resting on your chest, you lean over and kiss her forehead, tasting the warm saltiness of her perspiration. Ran murmurs, nuzzling you, her hands slipping up to run themselves through your own sweat-matted hair.

"I forgot what that felt like," she whispers, her eyes still closed. "It might get to be a habit. What am I going to do?"

She opens her eyes and looks up at you shyly through her dark lashes. You notice that she missed a spot of her eyeliner and you reach down and rub it away with your thumb. Ran sighs as you busy yourself smoothing her hair away from her eyes. With her large ears so close, you can't resist running your fingers up along the edge of one of them, and Ran is soon making a contented sound not unlike a purr.

"Stop it," she mutters. "Or you'll get me excited again and have to suffer the consequences."

But soon she's asleep and you return to stroking the smoothness of her back. You're sweaty and sticky and with Ran's head on your chest, it's a little difficult to breathe. But such overwhelming happiness suffuses you, a happiness that makes your chest ache, that you don't notice any of it. The last thing you see, as sleep overtakes you as well, is the glistening string of saliva hanging down from Ran's lips onto your chest.

She's drooling again.

When you wake up, Ran is gone. You stretch out your hands to where she was and feel only warmth and the depression her body has left. But her scent is everywhere. You hug her pillow to your chest like a child and lay there, breathing in the richness of her scent and thinking about everything that happened last night. You wish she was still here beside you.

Then you hear the voices. They're coming from the living room, and you suspect that it was them that woke you up. They're raised, and after a while you're able to start making out words.

It's Ran and Yukari. And they're arguing.

Yukari's voice: "...know how embarrassing that was? I was mortified. When Reimu finds out about it I'll never hear the end of it from her."

Ran. "Lady Yukari, it wasn't his fault. I don't think it's fair to blame him for something that..."

"No, Ran. I blame you. It's your conduct that I'm talking about. You seem to have forgotten that you're my shikigami. Your responsibility is to me and to me only."

"But Lady Yukari..."

"It was fine when he was sick. He gave you something to do. But now, this compulsion of yours is a distraction. It's made you weak."

"He hasn't made me weak." Ran's voice is soft but adamant. "He's made me happy."

Silence. "Happy?" Yukari's voice is pungently scornful. "It's not your job to be happy, Ran. Your job is to serve me and help me maintain the border. Everything else is immaterial."

'But it was you who wanted to keep him, Lady Yukari."

"That it was, Ran. And now that he's better, I think it's time for him to go."

Footsteps. Yukari opens the door to the room and looks straight into your eyes. Her own violet ones are frightening in their intensity.

"It looks like the sake is almost all gone," says Yukari without humour. "So it's time for the party to end. Get up."

You're really in no position to argue. You slip out of bed. Ran is just behind Yukari, looking in at you with a mixture of concern and despair on her face.

Once you're dressed, Yukari steps into the room and takes hold of your arm.

"Let's go, then."

Her grip is cold and inexorable. She drags you out of the room. Chen's door opens and the little cat youkai appears, rubbing her eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asks in alarm.

"Go back to sleep, Chen," Yukari snaps at her.

She marches you into the genkan and waits for you to put on your shoes. Then she takes a hold of your arm again and almost pushes you out the front door.

Ran is waiting for you both just outside. Her face is hard.

"Lady Yukari," she says. "He doesn't want to go and I don't want him to go either. I won't let you send him back."

Yukari stops and drops your arm. Her voice is dangerously gentle. "So it's got as bad as this, has it? A shikigami directly contradicting her mistress? You forget your place, Ran."

"I'm sorry, Lady Yukari," says Ran, her eyes lowered. "But I love him."

Yukari laughs. It's almost hysterical, and thick with mockery. "You love him? You know what I think, Ran? I think you love it."

Ran's face darkens and she takes a step forward.

"You'd raise your hand against me, Ran?" Yukari's voice is almost inhuman in its coldness. "The one who rescued you, clothed you and raised you? Ha!" She takes several steps forward, slow and threatening. "Get out of my way, Ran."

Ran shakes her head.

Yukari sighs. "Very well then. Since you insist on continuing this ridiculous behaviour, I will meet you half way. Fight me, if he means so much to you. Fight me in danmaku, here and now. Spellcard Rules. If you defeat me, you can keep him. But if I defeat you, I will do as I wish."

Ran's face pales, but she nods.

"Yukari-sama!" It's Chen, joining you on the porch. "Please, please don't hurt Ran-sama!"

Yukari turns on her, her arm raised as if meaning to strike her from a distance. "I told you to go back to bed!"

A wave of force slams onto the porch, and you feel it graze past you. Chen, however, takes the brunt of it and with a cry the little youkai is thrown back through the front door which slams shut behind her.

Ran's eyes are red. Somehow she looks already defeated. But then she turns to look at you. You smile at her and she smiles back. It's that sad smile you've always hated seeing, but there is love in her eyes, open and unconcealed. It wells up, and suddenly the look in her eyes hardens.

"Are you ready, Ran?" asks Yukari.

Ran nods. She smiles at you one last time then turns to join her mistress in the open area before the mansion where she's waiting,.

As Ran walks to meet her, spell cards in hand, Yukari takes out her own from a fold in her robe and rifles through them.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Ran?" asks Yukari with a grim smile. "I'm worried you might be out of practice. I don't want to hurt you."

"I'd worry about myself if I were you, Lady Yukari."

Yukari's smile widens and then she bursts into peals of laughter. When she gets a hold of herself, she says, "I was worried you weren't going to make this a contest, Ran. I'm glad I was wrong."

With that Yukari's violet eyes close. The long blonde hair that frames her face begins to waft, as though a strong wind has whipped up out of nowhere. But the air is totally still, and there is almost utter silence, as though all the earth is watching. Her robes begin to flutter and billow, and she rises slowly into the air, her feet leaving the ground.

Then her eyes flash open. The power apparent in their blazing violet is inhuman in its intensity. The unnatural wind rises quickly into a gale that lifts her high into the air where she hovers, waiting, her spell cards thrown from her hand now revolving in a slow circle about her.

"What are you waiting for, Ran?"

Ran's eyes, the beautiful yellow-gold eyes that made you fall in love with her, change. They flare as though an inner fire has been suddenly kindled within them, and their beauty takes on a fierce and unquenchable brightness. Her tails begin to snake, their fur standing on end as light spills up from the ground and envelopes her, like an aura of living fire. Her face is utterly transfigured, and you realise that here, now, you are seeing Ran in her true form, just as she looked when she fought against Reimu. Ran the youkai, the nine-tailed kitsune, the Gap Youkai's shikigami, Yakumo Ran.

Then Ran too rises into the air, coming level with Yukari, her spell cards floating before her hands in a wheel.

Yukari's mouth eases into the rictus of a smile. Her teeth are incandescent white needles like those of a shark.

"We fight until one of us is brought to their knees. Agreed?"

Ran nods.

The air before Ran opens and Yukari is right in front of her. She flicks her hand forward and a barrage of spears of light, like molten fragments of a star, spiral out. But Ran has already darted aside, each of the missiles coming within inches of her as she evades them in a flickering dance.

Ran gains height and then, with both hands raised before her, a fiery maelstrom of her own comes searing through the air towards Yukari. The Gap Youkai slips gracefully in between the impossibly intricate web of missiles, moving through gaps that you can't even imagine being there. Glittering spheres of light come perilously close to her, brushing past her robes, but she comes out from the storm of energy completely untouched.

Yukari laughs like the echoing explosion of a distant star. "So the old fox does remember how to fight!" She flicks a spiralling spell card from the halo surrounding her and cries, "Curse of Dreams and Reality!"

Wave upon wave of green and blue spears of burning energy spray from Yukari's hands, enveloping Ran in a maze of deadly magic. Your heart pounds as you lose sight of her, sure that there was no way she could have extricated herself from the barrage. But then you see a flash of blue, the suggestion of yellow from amongst the fiery display and Ran flies out of it, her own hands raised mid-gesture as she shouts, "Fox-Tanuki Youkai Laser!"

Beams of searing power spring from her hands and streak towards Yukari, and the Youkai of the Boundaries' eyes open wide in surprise as she vanishes amongst them. There is a blinding wave of light that blots out the sky and for a second you think that Ran's won.

But as it bleeds away, Yukari is still hovering there. Her lip curls in a delighted grin as she dusts off a sleeve. She is utterly unscathed.

Ran seems unsurprised. She wipes a drop of sweat from her brow.

"Well played, Ran," says Yukari. "Even those low-level spellcards can be dangerous, can they not? But you're not the only one that can play with lasers!" Her grin deepens with predatory intensity. She raises a hand and shouts, "Xanadu of Straight and Curve!"

The entire sky becomes alight with a meshwork of sparkling beams that quickly grow with blinding intensity. There's almost no space for Ran to manoeuvre, but somehow she manages it, sliding herself gracefully through narrowing gaps, and all the while Yukari is peppering her with a constant barrage of green and blue missiles.

The beams move slowly, but as Ran flies higher to avoid a wave of green projectiles she's suddenly cut off, trapped by a cage of the glittering beams. She hovers there for a second, the bars of light closing in upon her, almost touching her skin, until at last one of them begins to die away and she flies out through it, but not without brushing past another of the beams. There is a flash and you see the material of one of her long sleeves sear and burn away into nothing.

For a moment you think Ran must be injured, but if she is she shows no sign of it. She's already harrying Yukari with an intricate fusillade of blossoming green arrows, careening and reversing their path as her mistress flies dancing between them. Yukari's face is mask of manic delight and her laughter scours the sky as it burns with her and Ran's deadly magic.

"Mesh of Light and Darkness!"

"Charming Siege from All Sides!"

"Bewitching Butterfly Living in the Zen Temple!"

"Ultimate Buddhist!"

As they fight, neither of them giving ground, the air burning with the deadly fireworks of danmaku, you hear them cry name after name of powerful magic. Ran gives no sign of slowing, but unlike Yukari she is sweating, and here and there her robes are blackened with the burns of near misses. Yukari, however, remains unscathed, and you feel a hideous iciness in the pit of your stomach.

For all her grace and skill and power, Ran has been struggling to keep up with her mistress from the beginning. And it becomes all the more apparent when you notice that, despite the different names, their spells are very similar.

Of course. Yukari taught Ran everything she knows. This is a battle between teacher and pupil, a battle Ran just can't win. But she's fighting anyway, risking herself for you. You run out into the field, shouting up to them, but your voice is lost in the tempest of destructive magical energy above you.

The air reverberates with the crackling roar of missiles bursting, sizzles with the hissing of searing beams of light, and all the while the glowing sigils and revolving magic circles dance about them.

And still Ran fights on in silence, while Yukari laughs until it seems as though it's the sky itself that is doubled over in an ecstasy of hilarity.

Then the sky becomes clear. Ran and Yukari are floating there, on either side of the aerial battlefield. Ran's chest is heaving, her hat askance, her hair glues to her face with sweat. Yukari's laughter, meanwhile, has died away, the smile fading from her face as her violet eyes narrow.

A droplet of sweat appears at her temple and slips down to her cheek.

"It's time to end this, Ran," she says.

One last spell card is hovering before Yukari's face and with a sweep of her hand she sends it spiralling up into the air as she cries out,

"Boundary of Life and Death!"

Nothing you've seen before prepares you for what happens next. It's as if the very heavens have caught fire, as if the moon has disintegrated into fragments and is falling to earth in a meteoric bombardment. Blue spheres and great red globes of living fire streak through the sky at Ran and you have to shield your eyes as you search for her among them.

You can't see her among the burning maelstrom of light, but you hear her voice.

"Princess Tenko's Illusion!"

Yukari is grinning again as she conjures wave after wave of danmaku and sends it hurtling towards Ran. But whenever it seems as though the kitsune is about to be overwhelmed, there is a flash of light and the blue of her robes and the yellow of her tails appears elsewhere in the sky.

"Wily old fox," mutters Yukari. Her hands become a blur.

Soon the air blisters with the heat of her projectiles' energy. There seems to be no place left for Ran to hide, even with her teleportation. She seems to realise this, too, and after a series of near-misses Ran changes her strategy. She flies straight towards Yukari, zigzagging as the danmaku comes at her in a veritable tsunami of fire.

Yukari's laughter splits the sky. The spheres of energy are so thick now that Ran cannot dodge them cleanly. First one brushes her, leaving a burn-mark smouldering across her robe, then another, and another, and you wonder at how she is able to keep going. A globe of yellow spitting energy strikes her, knocking her hat from her head, its disintegrating fragments flying back in a shower of ash. Ran's face is a mask of pain, but her eyes remain glued on her goal.

Yukari.

Ran is right on top of her now and the last thing you see is the fiery blossom of danmaku that she manages to envelope Yukari in at point blank range. Then Ran, too, is wreathed in the glowing fire of the final wave of brilliant energy that Yukari manages to send against her and the two are silhouetted by the flare of a great explosion that rips across the sky with a shuddering roar.

Your pull your hands from your eyes and look up trying to see what has happened. There is total darkness, but then colour and light returns to your sight and the cerulean blue of the sky with it.

Floating down from it is a small, black figure, falling with her limbs slack and her head hanging backwards, seemingly little heavier than a leaf.

Ran.

You run out into the field, your feet crunching against the charred grass and broken earth of the battlefield, and you're beneath her when the little magic she has left gives out and she plummets straight towards the ground.

You catch her before she hits. You stumble forwards onto your knees, but somehow you manage to keep a hold of her. You lower her gently to the ground, cradling her in your arms, wanting to crush her to you but worried that to do so would hurt her. Her robes are little more than charred rags now, her body streaked with ash. But despite all your wildest fears, she seems unharmed.

She's breathing, her chest rising and falling as you brush a blackened lock of her once-blonde hair from her face. Her eyes flicker open, her gaze meeting yours.

"Just like the first time we met," she whispers.

Tears stream down your cheeks as you hug her to you, and Ran, slipping her exhausted arms around your neck, hugs you back with the little energy she has left.

"I'm sorry I lost," she mutters.

You tell her that she was the most amazing thing you have ever seen.

Looking up, you see Yukari float down from the sky and land on the ground not far away. Her hat is askew, her blonde hair disarranged, and as she comes closer you see her wipe a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth.

"Such fierce eyes," she says to you, but there is no mockery in her voice for once. "The eyes of one ready to defend his love to the death. So like the eyes I saw on you, Ran, just a little while ago."

"You win, Lady Yukari." Ran begins to struggle to her feet and you realise she's trying to get up to kneel, but Yukari puts a hand on her shoulder and stops her.

"There's no need for you to kneel to me, Ran. You did yourself great honour out there."

"And yet I lost." Ran's eyes turn to you and they redden, filling with tears "And now you're going to send him back to his world."

"I will do no such thing," says Yukari. "Unless, of course, he wishes me to." Her violet eyes fall on you. "Do you wish me to?"

You leave her in no doubt that you don't want to go. Yukari laughs.

Ran blinks her tear-filled eyes in confusion. "But Lady Yukari, you said-"

Yukari kneels beside you. From deep within her décolletage she takes a silken handkerchief decorated with a little red bow and lifts it to Ran's face. Her fingers are tender as she cleans the soot from the kitsune's cheek and chin. "You're not a very good listener, Ran. I said that if I won I would do as I wish. And so I shall. I no longer wish to send your friend away."

Ran's face collapses in relief when at last she realises that this is no cruel joke. She begins to cry and you hug her closer to you and stroke her hair.

"You were never going to send him away?" Ran whispers.

"Oh no," said Yukari. "I most certainly was going to. But after you stood up to me, I decided to give you a chance to prove yourself. If you had shown even the slightest moment of weakness in our battle, he would already now be back in his world. But you've proven me wrong, Ran. I thought that your love for this human had made you weak. In fact, it's made you stronger. 12.8 percent times stronger." She smiles ruefully. "A remarkable improvement." She eyes you and there is again mockery, but affectionate mockery, dancing in the violet of her gaze. "Maybe I shall borrow him from you to see if he has the same effect on me."

"No!" Ran turns on her mistress, her expression suddenly fierce, but just as quickly she dissolves into barely contained laughter.

"Very well," sighs Yukari. "Then I will have to go and find my own. Perhaps there is some likely candidate in the human village."

You shiver at the thought of the diabolical fate now hanging over some ill-starred young man, innocently going about his business at that moment in the human village, and wonder what might have happened if it had been Yukari's violet eyes that you had woken up to, all those days ago.

You shiver again.

There's the noise of someone thumping on wood and shouting, and Yukari stands up.

"Poor Chen! I forgot all about her."

With a wave of her hand the door to the Mayohiga mansion flies open and the little nekomata comes bounding across the field, shouting "Ran-sama! Ran-sama!" She stops dead when she sees her mistress in your arms, but then she leaps forward, flings her arms around Ran from behind and bursts into tears.

"There, there, Chen," murmurs Ran, turning from you to hug her. "I'm fine."

"But you and Yukari-sama were fighting!" Tears well in Chen's wide orange eyes.

"We were just playing," says Ran as she strokes the little cat youkai's face. "Don't cry. Everything is fine now."

Yukari uses the opportunity to take you aside. "Congratulations," she says. "But what I said about the sake still stands. I think your continued presence in Mayohiga may prove disruptive. I must ask you to leave."

Your gaze follows her as it flashes across the ruined wasteland of the field and you nod, unable to argue with the smoking evidence all about you.

"And as you can see, it might take a while for Chen to get used to the idea of sharing her mistress's heart with another. Perhaps you can find a place in the Human Village? I will talk to Reimu about it."

The thought of meeting the miko of Hakurei again fills you with trepidation, and Yukari laughs at the look on your face.

"Oh, dear Reimu's bark is far worse than her bite," says Yukari. "But perhaps I'll keep an eye on her. She's never much enjoyed being thwarted and she might even be so bold as to try and spirit you back home given half the chance."

But the anxiety you feel from the threat of Reimu passes quickly as joy wells up in your heart. You're going to remain in Gensoukyou, and Ran is yours!

As Ran hugs Chen to her, she turns to look at you. Even battle-worn as she is, she is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, and when she smiles, her great yellow-gold eyes glistening with emotion, you find yourself falling in love with her all over again.

"Well, well," says Yukari with a sigh as she flicks a spot of ash from her robe. "This has been fun, but I think everyone needs to go take a shower. There's a definite smell of perspiration in the air, and sweaty fox is one thing I can do without."

You help Chen support Ran as you all make your way back to the house. Was it really only a week ago that your places were reversed? With her arm in the crook of your own, she turns and whispers in your ear.

Three words. Three simple, single-syllable words that make you the happiest man in this world or any other.

"I love you."

The End


End file.
